Quick Tip #29 - Etsy Relevancy

The helpful folks at Handmadeology (another great resource for handmade business owners) have ut together a free report on Etsy Relevancy. You do need to give them your email address for their mailing list but you can unsubscribe after getting the report if you really don't want it.

Etsy Relevancy and How to Get Noticed

I put off writing this article for a couple weeks to see how relevancy is working and work out what I think works and doesn't work. First of all I want everyone who hasn't read it yet to go read my posts SEO and Your Customers and Being Seen is Not Enough for some more background on my thoughts on how your writing effects your customers and why ranking well in search shouldn't be your only goal.  

This article is going to have a lot of images so I'm posting them scaled down, click to enlarge if you're having trouble reading them.

Determining Relevancy
Factors Etsy uses in determining relevancy according to their article on the subject.
Titles - In particular Etsy is weighting the words at the beginning of a title more than the words at the end. In particular the first 3 words are the most important.

Tags - Tags in this case also include the categories you pick when you list an item. I'm not positive on this but my own experiments seem to imply that those tags weight a little higher than the ones you type in. Keep in mind that Materials do not count as tags and are not factored into search (I tested this, using a material listed that I am not using as a tag and it did not show up in the search at all) so if the material is an important selling point of the item you must have it in the tags.

Recency - This is how newly listed or renewed your item is. In the past all of Etsy's searches defaulted to just the most recent, now it is just one factor in the search. This means you don't need to renew items all the time to be higher in the search but it's probably still a good idea to have items spread out in how recently they have been listed. If you previously renewed multiple items every day you can now just renew an item or two that are close to expiring. This of course is going to save you money in listing fees that you can better use on other advertising.

Attributes - These new options for recipient, occasion, and style. Etsy has stated that they will be used in search eventually but right now they do not factor into search (as proven by the fact that "unisex adult jewelry" has almost no results). So until these attributes are included in the search if they are an important selling point for your item they must be included in tags.

From my own experiments this is how I think the level of importance for relevancy goes:

1. First 3 words of the title
2. Categories (possibly the same or nearly the same weight as #1)
3. Tags 
4. Remaining words in the title (possibly the same or nearly the same weight as #3)
5. Recency

I haven't been able to determine the exact weight of these factors but let's for the sake of simplicity give them point values (I am sure the algorithm is more complex than this but it gives you the idea):

• First 3 words = 4 pts
• Category = 3pts
• Tags = 2pts
• Other title words = 1pts

Okay so if I search "Octopus Necklace" we would have:

(Category -> Necklace)+(First 3 words -> Octopus)+(Tag -> Octopus)+(Title words -> Necklace) = 4+3+2+1 = 10

but if I searched "Octopus Pendant" I would instead have

(First 3 words -> Octopus)+(Tag -> Pendant)+(Tag -> Octopus) = 4+2+2 = 6. 

Thus I would expect that even though there are far fewer results for "Octopus Pendant" than "Octopus Necklace" that I would rank lower in the search results for "Octopus Pendant" (and I do, in fact when I just ran this search "Octopus Pendant" didn't return one of my items until page 16 while the same necklace was near the top of page 2 for "Octopus Necklace"). So where does recency play into this? I think Etsy uses recency to rank items that otherwise have "equal" scores with the newer one being higher ranked than the older one.

Improving your Relevancy
In many ways improving relevancy is the same as improving your onsite SEO (one of the reasons I've had to make very few changes in order to rank well in relevancy). Use good keywords that shoppers are going to think of in search, if you need a little help use a keyword tool like Google Keyword Tool. Also use the keyword tool to make sure the words and phrases you come up with are ones that people search for while still being closely related to what your product is.

Make sure you use all your tag spaces and select all 3 categories if you can. Don't waste any tag spaces. For example if your items colors have name variations (for example a deep purple could be tagged both "purple" and "plum") and you have a space to fill use the color variation. If you item has a number of different names for the style make for you use them (for example a woman's tank top could also be tagged with "camisole").

Write good descriptive titles with important words at the beginning. You don't have to sacrifice your cute item names either! For example if you are a baby clothing maker and you have a item currently called "Joshua" that is a blue corduroy jacket a title like this would have good relevancy: "Blue Baby Jacket "Joshua" in Soft Warm Corduroy for Age 16 Months". Now the title "Blue baby jacket corduroy 16 months" would be just as relevant for the keywords "blue", "baby", "jacket", "corduroy", and "16 months" but the first title has more consumer appeal. You have a 140 character limit for titles, that first title looks long but it's only 65 characters so don't be afraid to write longer descriptive titles if you need to.

Remember the "long tail" while a lot of people will search popular but general terms like "red dress" a person searching for "red polka dot retro dress" is more likely to be interested in and buy your item if it's a red polka dotted 40s inspired dress. This is why it's important to write descriptive titles and use all your tags, to make sure people using those long tail search terms find your items because they are more likely to buy.

Keep an Open Mind

I'm currently working on a wholesale jewelry order however it's not one of my standard designs. Not even close in fact. My usually jewelry designs are sea creatures not food however I was contacted about doing a large number of vegetable earrings. One of my twitter friends who also makes jewelry (but not in polymer clay) wanted some pieces to sell at a local festival that was geared towards it's theme. We worked out a price per piece and I've been busy creating them. If I was to keep rigidly to my usual jewelry themes I would have missed this chance for a pretty good order. I don't plan to expand my own lines to food or anything of that nature but for a custom wholesale order? Absolutely.

Quarterly Sprucing Up

I've written before about how important it is to keep reevaluating what you are doing and keeping your business fresh. I like to go through my shop every 3 months and make sure everything it as good as it can be and see if anything needs changing. I generally do this at the end of March, June, September, and December (after the holiday rush). Well I got a little behind so I'm just now working on freshening up my Etsy shop.

Here's what I did:

• Made sure all listings had up to date information and tags.
• Moved the short little stories for my cephalopod jewelry to after the main description instead of before.
• Added new custom order listings.
• Changed some categories. I completely got rid of the "Clearance" section, changed "Gifts and More" to "Seasonal Gifts" and added an "Everything Else" category (right now it just has my decorated tins which were moved out of "Gifts and More" but will have other stuff soon).

 Of course I've also been working on other things, more videos of my products for my YouTube Channel, updating the Noadi.net website, updating my Squidoo lenses, getting my presence on Google+, and updating and ordering new business cards.

So what could you do right now to freshen up your online presence?

Showing Related Etsy Items on your Wordpress Site or Blog

This trick is something I just set up on my own site and is specific to blogs and sites running self-hosted Wordpress. Unfortunately I don't have an alternative for other platforms or wordpress.com hosted blogs. However if you have wordpress installed on your own hosting read on for a very cool trick to get more people to click from your site to your etsy shop.

I've been using a widget here on this blog called LinkWithin for quite a long time, at the bottom of each post it links to related posts here on the blog. I thought that it would be great to have something like this on my website but linking to my Etsy items. I searched through a lot of related post wordpress plugins before finally finding one that will pull items from an external site. The plugin is called nrelate and it lets you pull related posts not just from your blog but from any site in your blogroll. I have the links I want displayed in a separate link list and only my Etsy shop in the blogroll. I set the plugin to show 0 posts from site and 5 from my blogroll and now I have Etsy items beneath every posts on my site.

Useful Etsy Features

I've written before about Etsy Hacks and how useful they are but today I want to talk about digging into Etsy's options that you may not know about that make running your shop much easier.

Your Etsy
By default clicking the "Your Etsy" link takes you to your currently listed items if you're a seller. If you go to the Account link and click the Preferences tab you can change this to go to your Sold Items instead.

Message to Buyer
A thank you note is always nice to send your buyer but you can do so much more with this message. I include a link to my newsletter which is simply using Feedburner to turn an RSS feed into an email. You can use your shop RSS to do this, I went a step further and used RSSMix to combine both my shop feed and my studio blog.

Download Shop Data
I use spreadsheets for all my accounting including tracking inventory. Etsy added this option fairly recently and it makes inventory much easier. I download my entire shop as a .csv at the beginning of each month which combined with the data from the beginning of the previous month and my sold items I have most of the inventory data that I need with a minimum of fuss. You can find your shop data under Shop Settings -> Options and click the Download Data tab.

Download Sold Items
At the beginning of each month when it's time to do my accounting for the previous month I download the .csv file for my sold items form the previous month. This file has a wealth of information about your sold items that you can use, price, shipping, sales tax, coupon codes used, customer names and addresses, and more.

Download Etsy Bill
Another useful accounting download on Etsy is your Bill. It has a breakdown of every fee and payment you've made for a month. You can find it under the Your Bill link then click the month you want and scroll to the bottom of the page.

Blog Tracking

No, this isn't a post on google analytics or any other stats program. It's about how to increase your exposure on blogs by getting organized. You will need only 3 things for this: email, spreadsheet software (excel, open office, etc), and this article from Modish on how to approach blogs. Optional tool: Google alerts.

In your spreadsheet you will need various columns to track blogs that have featured you or that you want to feature you. Here's what I have for mine:
Contacted - Yes/No
Featured - Yes/No
Blog Name - Noadi's Art Blog
URL - http://noadi.blogspot.com
Topic - Handmade
Notes - Blah blah blah
Editor Name - Sheryl
Contact - NoadiArt@gmail.com
Date Contacted - 1/1/11
Date Featured - 1/1/11
Feature URL - http://noadi.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-year-new-ideas.html

I use Google Alerts to see new mentions of my name, business, name, or URLs so I know of blog features where the blogger hasn't emailed me that I've been featured (this happens frequently).

I first input all blog that have featured me (that I know of), then add those I want to feature me. This can be a time consuming task as there are a lot of blogs on the topics I want to feature my work. This is the main point of this spreadsheet, create a big list of blogs you want to feature you then contact one or two of them every day making sure to mark that they've been contacted and the date. If you don't hear back from them or get a feature in a few months, send a reminder (and only one, if they still don't feature you they probably aren't interested).

The blogs that have featured your work can be your list of blogs to contact again in the future when you have something new and special to share like a brand new line. They already like your work so don't be afraid to contact them again.

Use an Eye Catching Signature

Email signatures are great. They get attached to all your outgoing emails and can be a simple, passive, means of advertising. There are definitely more effective ways to market, but since creating a signature takes all of 5 minutes at the most it's worth the time.

If you use an email program like Outlook or Firebird you already have easy tools to create an attractive signature but if you use web based mail you may not be able to create an html based signature. However there is a solution for web based email services if you use Firefox or Chrome. A little while ago I found Wisestamp which is an extension for Firefox or Chrome and is compatible with Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, Hotmail, and several more services. It has a nice interface that makes creating a signature very easy with some nice tools like social media buttons and the ability to display items from an RSS feed.

Managing Goals

So you have some business goals for the new year. How are you going to keep yourself on track to complete them? Here are a few ideas for managing your goals.

Time: Say your goal is to blog 3 times a week but you're good at forgetting. Google Calender to set up recurring event reminders that are sent to your email a set time before you want it done (e.g. 2 hours).

Sales: Tim Adams of Handmadeology has created a free sales goal tracking spreadsheet. It's aimed at Etsy sellers but will work whatever venue (or multiple venues) you use.

Shop: Overhaul your shop for 2011 with this article from Handmade Spark that compile a great list of ideas for improving your shop and sales for the new year.

When Do People Look at Your Shop?

What time of day people are viewing your shop can be a valuable bit of information to know. You could time new items to go up during the busiest time, and make changes during the slowest times. If you post frequently on twitter or facebook you might find the trend correlates heavily to when you are posting to those social media sites and make an effort to spread your posting out more to communicate with people who aren't online when you are usually posting.

So how do you find this out? Assuming you are using Google Analytics it's pretty easy though a bit hidden in the interface. Here's step by step how to do it:

Step 1: Log into Google Analytics.

Step 2: Click Visitors in the sidebar menu

Step 3: Click Visitor Trending

Step 4: Click Visits in the secondary menu under Visitor Trending

Step 5: Expand your date range. To get the best average you want to use a large date range. I used a year but if you haven't had Analytics collecting data that long you could do 6 months or since you installed Analytics. It's up to you but try to use at least several months worth of data to get the best picture.

Step 6: Click the Clock. Right over the visits graph on the right you will see some tiny icons, you want to click the one that looks like a clock face.

Step 7: Analyze the information. In my case my least views are at 6am and the most at 5pm for my time zone. Google uses a 24 hour clock not a 12 hour one which can be a bit confusing if you aren't used to it, just subtract 12 from times past 12:59 (14:00 is 2pm).

Etsy Coupon Codes

Etsy has finally released the long awaited coupon codes. As of the time I'm writing this they haven't been rolled out to everyone but I was one of the lucky people who got it. This is also why I'm posting twice in one day, I already have posts for Monday and Wednesday next week and didn't want to wait to post this.  I did a quick test run of coupon code yesterday and it seems to work great.

There are a few additions to the coupon codes I hope Etsy makes in the future such as options to limit the code to one use only or to one use per user and to limit the coupon to just one section and not the whole shop. Right now a coupon can be used any number of times until you make it inactive and applies to the whole shop. It's a great start for the feature but I hope to see it expanded in the future.

Now on the the fun: How to promote your coupons! Here's a short list, please add your own suggestions in the comments I'd love to see them.

• Post on Twitter, your website, blog, or facebook fan page.
• Post in the Promotions section of Etsy's forum
• Post on coupon code sites like RetailMeNot
• Host a contest on your blog or social network of choice and email/message the winner with the coupon code. Personally I like trivia contests, I've done them before for giveaways as well.
• Include a Thank You note in orders with a coupon code for repeat customers
• Hand out your business cards with a code on them for new customers

Couple other thoughts: I'd put a short time limit on most coupon codes you advertise online, 3 days for example. This will help prevent someone turning up with a 15% off coupon when you already have your prices marked down for a sale.

Always include an expiration date for coupons you hand out or include with orders (even if you plan to use the code for a long time you should do this, change over your codes every 6 months or so) you never want an angry customer saying her code doesn't work because you've inactivated it with no warning.

Quick Tip #28 - Edit Express

6.Here's another great new tool using Etsy's API from Craftopolis. It lets you do a number of bulk editing tasks like change prices or titles.

Holiday Photo Props

As the holidays approach it's worthwhile to take some seasonal photos of your products. Whether it's holiday items like ornaments or cards or just your usual items a few props can make your product listings or advertising a little more fitting for the season. Here are a few ideas for simple props you can get at your local dollar store this time of year.

• Mini artificial tree, those between 6-12 inches would work well for draping jewelry on.
• Artificial wreath. The image for this post is of one of my platypus ornaments displayed with a 6 inch wreath laying on it's side.
• Silk poinsettas as a backdrop.
• Plain glass ball ornaments. I'd stay away from too many colors and highly decorated ones, solid colors will distract less from your own items.
• Wide metallic ribbon.
• Gift boxes.

And a few natural items that you might be able to find for free out on a walk:

• Pine cones
• Branches
• Evergreen boughs (be careful of pitch getting on your items or your backdrop if it needs to be reused)

Do you have any ideas? Go ahead and share them in the comments.

Quick Tip #27 - Etsy on Sale

A few weeks ago I blogged about a greasemonkey script to quickly change prices on Etsy for sales. Well now there's an even better tool for this: Etsy on Sale. It uses the Etsy API to edit the prices on either all your listings or just those in a section and then automatically returns them to their previous prices when your sale is over.You can even schedule your sale in advance to give you plenty of time to promote it before it starts.

Handmadeology has a short tutorial on how to use this tool.

Etsy Stats: Metricly

I always like to take a look at what tools Etsy is featuring in their Handmade Code series on the Storque blog. Usually I either think it might be useful and add it to my Squidoo lens on Etsy Tools or bypass it if I don't see it as very useful. However they recently featured a tool I had to try out and I find it really interesting because I love stats.

Metricly lets you see data about your shop in pretty easy to understand graphs. Here's one on New vs Repeat Sales (I edited it to show from the 1st of this year and number of items sold, the default is the last 12 months and the $ amount of sales):

The graphs are very easy to understand and edit and compile some very useful data on your shop. I think this is a great way to help put into perspective how your shop is doing over time.

You can also connect other data sources such as google analytics for your Etsy shop. I need to play around with Metricly a bit more to figure out how that will work and if it gives any insight I can't get easily from my Analytics reports.

Quick Tip #26 - Schedule your Etsy Item Renewal

I hadn't planned to write any posts this week, I have a bad foot injury and the doctor put me on serious painkillers that are messing with my head a bit. However I came across this tool and have to share:

Clockbot is a new tool from Statsy that lets you schedule item renewals. This is perfect if you work a day job and want to have items renewed during the day, or when you're out of town, or at night when you're sleeping.

Quick Tip #25 - Quick Discounting in Etsy

No weekly inspiration this week because I just came across a wonderful Greasemonkey script for Etsy. Those of you who already use the EtsyHacks know about Greasemonkey, it is a wonderful add-on for the Firefox browser that lets to install scripts that modify how you can use websites (I also use some for gmail, squidoo, and a few other sites).

Today's useful script is by Etsy seller krtwood and lets you bulk discount all items in your shop by a percentage and adds a quick edit link under the price in your currently listed item list.

Download Quick Price Edit Here

Notes: 
1: % is set as that % of original price 50% of $10=$5, 80% of $10=$8. So 10% of $10 would be $1 not $9.
2: To reverse your discount do 10000/% used. So 10000/80=125%

A Relaxed Mind

My name is Marie Young. I believe everyone has a creative spark, but sometimes life pees on it. I write
a blog “Creative Sprinkle,” to help people reignite their spark. I find exploring the broader topic of
creativity helps me design for my online shop, Young Creative.

“A relaxed mind is a creative mind.”

This is my favorite quote on creativity. It is attributed to Yogi Bhajan, but I’m ashamed to admit that I
discovered it in a fortune cookie.
While I love this quote, “relaxed” is not my natural state of being. I am one of those task-oriented
people who work extremely well under a deadline. A relaxed mind was a foreign concept to me until
recently.

Those of you running a creative business while balancing a home life probably identify with the image
of a superwoman, flying from one cry for help to another, accomplishing amazing feats. It is a proud
banner to wear, yet it is also an exhausting one.

No question, we all have to get things done. The problem comes in when we live every day in high
production mode. A frenzied mind has a harder time coming up with fresh ideas. It is also far more
prone to burn-out.

There are two paths I routinely walk to find my relaxed mind: one that purges the mind and one that
stimulates it.

Purge the Mind
This where you take a break and clear your head, the closer to burn-out you are the longer the break
may need to be. Here are some of my favorite mind-purging activities.

1. Meditate: This can be as simple as sitting in your garden or staring into a fire. Start with 5

minutes and gradually increase the time.

2. Take a walk: Concentrate on your surroundings. If you mind wanders back to your to-do-list

gently redirect it.

3. Capture thoughts: Find a trusted way of capturing ideas and to-do-list items, so you can get

them down on paper and give your brain a break.

4. Clean: Physical clutter adds to mental clutter. Put on some lively music and clear those cluttered

thoughts away.

5. Fast: Take a short fast from social media and other mental energy zappers. Set aside social

media free times to give your brain a rest.
Simulate the Mind
Once your mind is calm, it becomes a powerful receptacle for new ideas. Stimulating your mind can help
you see things in a new light.

1. Seek new inspiration: Men’s ties provide great inspiration for my jewelry. Does something

outside of your specialty catch your eye? Is there something there that you can adapt?

2. Stimulate the senses: Essential oils are a good source for mental stimulation. A couple drops of

peppermint oil in a bowl of water near my workspace does wonders.

3. Take a mini retreat: When you feel open to some major brainstorming, arrange some dedicated

time for it. Sit in your special place and allow yourself to dream, sketch, and jot things down. No
computer and no distractions.

All of these suggestions are simple in theory, but it will take some patience on your part before
you see results. Start small and slowly add one or two into your routine and build up from there.

What techniques do you use to purge or stimulate your mind?

Quick Tip #24 - Be Your Own Model

Morphologica has a great article on the Sellers Assisting Sellers blog about using yourself to model your products. This is something I plan to do next time I get to the ocean (what better backdrop for my sea creature jewelry) as promotional shots for banners, ads, etc. I can't do it for every piece of jewelry I make it would be far too time consuming. So think about how you can use photographs with a model, whether that's you, a friend, or someone you've hired, to promote your work.

Quick Tip #23 - Survey Your Customers

I came across this fantastic article on setting up post purchase customer surveys with paypal. I just set one up for my account and it was extremely easy. Also while your setting up the survey consider customizing the payment page with your logo or adding some of the other available options.